European Vegetarian Union

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 6 Sept. 2003 in Ghent,Belgium

Start 10.00 h

• coordinated press release on World Vegetarian Day on 1 October (a draft was distributed to attendees for comment)
• Christmas Compassion, 2nd edition
• in 2004: national organisations should be encouraged to run their projects under the EVU-umbrella
• VEBU suggested organising the “Silvestertagung” in cooperation with EVU
• Marcel Hebbelinck suggested common projects for same-language organisations and to encourage members to inform the Secretariat about events so that they can be promoted in the EVU-community.

• no EVU Congresses are planned for the near future
• the IVU Congress will take place in Brazil in 2004
• the Vegetarier Bund Deutschland will organise the 2008-Vegetarian World Congress in/near Dresden and invited the EVU to join in.
• Hans Bosch gave information about a new Dutch Version of the Belgian V-Day next year (in May-June ).

Secretary Report

• The magazine has been distributed regularly every three months.
• Since it was not possible for Renato Pichler to take care of the layout for free any longer (in addition to his own two magazines Vegi- Info), it is now done by someone else.
• In this context I would like to thank Karen Trevayne for her wonderful help in editing the manuscripts.

• Christian W. took over as webmaster in March. However, since the necessary work on the website proved to be too wide-ranging, a new one needed to be built with outside help.

• Already existing working contacts were developed and intensified and new ones initiated.
• EU: The EVU’s contribution to the European Convention led to a continuous flow of useful EU information.
• The EVU is mentioned on the Commission's database “Consultation, the European Commission and Civil Society (CONECCS) http://europa.eu.int/comm/civil_society/coneccs/index_en.htm , which gives information on non-profit civil society organisations organised at a European level. CONECCS is a voluntary information tool, a “who-is-who” and who-does-what” in the representation of European civil society interests.
• We have created a mailing-list on EU matters through which members can inform one another about important events in that field.

• rules for organising congresses
• website rules

• In Spring 2003, a Belgian health insurance company (Mutualité Libres ) has distributed a very nice brochure about vegetarianism which has found remarkable interest, even in the Belgian medical press. This project had been developed with the Belgian vegetarian organisations and the EVU.
• The American Dietetic Association (ADA) has recently published a policy paper stressing the benefits of a vegetarian and vegan diet. We shall report about that vegetarian “milestone” in our magazine 4.2003.

EVU Financial Report 2002

2002 was a rather positive financial year for the EVU. We received a legacy which gave us the opportunity to extend the registration of the label to almost all European countries (except a few that are not part of the Madrid agreement) and to start with promotional material for the label (mostly purchased in 2003). We were again able to distribute four magazines per year, and bought some equipment for the Secretariat.

The income through the label is slightly increasing. After the consolidation of the basic structures, we intend to intensify our promotional work. The label progress in Switzerland should be an example for others to follow.

2002 was the first year with the EURO as common currency. From my point of view it is great progress, as it makes my work much easier. We still have the Swiss account in Swiss Francs, but that represents only a small part of our total banking.

Since the beginning of July 2003, new regulations for international money transfers have been in existence within the EU.

They make it much simpler and cheaper to send money abroad, only EURO so far, but that is the main part of all our transactions.

Nevertheless we intend to slightly increase the annual EVU subscriptions. The last augmentation was approved in 1997, in Bussolengo. After the introduction of the EURO there was even a small reduction. In the meantime the prices for almost everything went up, especially for printing and layout costs. Our main purpose now is to have round figures and enable our members to send small amounts in an envelope. We also want to reorganise the classification of our member societies according to their member numbers in a clearly arranged pattern.

Together with the Secretary we made a revision revision of our member list, based on payments. We removed certain addresses from our member list, namely those of individual members who had not paid for more than a year and full members who had not paid for more than two years. All these people/ organisations had not explained their reasons for not paying and so we had no other choice but to clean our list up. A similar action will take place this year, after a final reminder.

At the moment we have in our address list:

assistants/helper	4
associate organisations	10
co-operation partners	5
member families	10
individual members	76
individual life members	10
exchange magazine	1
member societies	58
Total	174

Our main aims for the future are, as far as finances are concerned: to find out more about available grants and to make use of these sources, to look for sponsors, try to sell ads and magazine-subscriptions, to intensify the promotional work for the label, to prepare standardised material to be used everywhere in Europe in order to boost our label-project.

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